Authorities in Las Vegas on Sunday arrested a pair of suspects in connection with the death of software engineer and Palo Alto resident Neil Brian Gandler, 42, shot in his car on Dec. 28 outside a 24-Hour Fitness gym.

Kyle Staats, 27, and Megan Hippe, 19, were booked into the Clark County Detention Center, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. They have been charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery. Staats also faces one count of possession of a stolen vehicle, according to police.

Police have not released a possible motive. They said numerous tips from the public helped lead to the arrests. According to police, Gandler parked his car at the gym on Rainbow Boulevard in Las Vegas at 10 p.m. on Dec. 28. He did not enter the gym.

At 1 a.m., a two-door coupe pulled next to Gandler’s car. Ten minutes later, his car, with a shattered driver’s side window, rolled onto a parking median. Gandler was found dead from a gunshot wound to the torso.

Friends said Gandler was a successful entrepreneur, charmingly eccentric and gregarious. He worked in software, they said, and was in Las Vegas to attend the this week’s Consumer Technology Association trade show, CES.

“He was a very loyal friend,” said Naomi Paschen of Belmont, who last saw Gandler on Dec. 23 when he visited her family for pizza. “He had a ton of friends, some of them since second grade. He was just somebody you wanted to be around.”

Paschen, 31, said she met Gandler in 2006 at a cafe in San Francisco and immediately struck up a friendship that grew stronger with time. She said Gandler had a talent for finding unique restaurants on his travels and writing reviews about them. Paschen said he had been shuttling recently between the Bay Area and New York to visit his aging father.

Other friends said Gandler would typically sleep in a rental car, rather than book a hotel room, and he’d shower at 24 Hour Fitness.

“He had no qualms about that,” said Marcus Berger, 39, a friend from Portland, Oregon. He said Gandler was basically living out of his car when they met around 2008 and got to know each other at Jewish social events. “He just liked having a different, mobile lifestyle.”

Gandler was a project manager at Hearwear Technology, which creates software for audiology clinics. He was active in the Bay Area Jewish community and participated in a Jewish-Palestinian organization to resolve conflict. He attended the University of Buffalo, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, according to his LinkedIn profile. He earned an MBA from the University of Michigan in 2005.

He previously worked at Dell, Ford Motor and Applied Signal Technology.

Authorities in Las Vegas on Sunday arrested a pair of suspects in connection with the death of software engineer and Palo Alto resident Neil Brian Gandler, 42, shot in his car on Dec. 28 outside a 24-Hour Fitness gym.

Kyle Staats, 27, and Megan Hippe, 19, were booked into the Clark County Detention Center, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. They have been charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery. Staats also faces one count of possession of a stolen vehicle, according to police.

Police have not released a possible motive. They said numerous tips from the public helped lead to the arrests. According to police, Gandler parked his car at the gym on Rainbow Boulevard in Las Vegas at 10 p.m. on Dec. 28. He did not enter the gym.

At 1 a.m., a two-door coupe pulled next to Gandler’s car. Ten minutes later, his car, with a shattered driver’s side window, rolled onto a parking median. Gandler was found dead from a gunshot wound to the torso.

Friends said Gandler was a successful entrepreneur, charmingly eccentric and gregarious. He worked in software, they said, and was in Las Vegas to attend the this week’s Consumer Technology Association trade show, CES.

“He was a very loyal friend,” said Naomi Paschen of Belmont, who last saw Gandler on Dec. 23 when he visited her family for pizza. “He had a ton of friends, some of them since second grade. He was just somebody you wanted to be around.”

Paschen, 31, said she met Gandler in 2006 at a cafe in San Francisco and immediately struck up a friendship that grew stronger with time. She said Gandler had a talent for finding unique restaurants on his travels and writing reviews about them. Paschen said he had been shuttling recently between the Bay Area and New York to visit his aging father.

Other friends said Gandler would typically sleep in a rental car, rather than book a hotel room, and he’d shower at 24 Hour Fitness.

“He had no qualms about that,” said Marcus Berger, 39, a friend from Portland, Oregon. He said Gandler was basically living out of his car when they met around 2008 and got to know each other at Jewish social events. “He just liked having a different, mobile lifestyle.”

Gandler was a project manager at Hearwear Technology, which creates software for audiology clinics. He was active in the Bay Area Jewish community and participated in a Jewish-Palestinian organization to resolve conflict. He attended the University of Buffalo, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, according to his LinkedIn profile. He earned an MBA from the University of Michigan in 2005.

He previously worked at Dell, Ford Motor and Applied Signal Technology.

Authorities in Las Vegas on Sunday arrested a pair of suspects in connection with the death of software engineer and Palo Alto resident Neil Brian Gandler, 42, shot in his car on Dec. 28 outside a 24-Hour Fitness gym.

Kyle Staats, 27, and Megan Hippe, 19, were booked into the Clark County Detention Center, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. They have been charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to commit robbery. Staats also faces one count of possession of a stolen vehicle, according to police.

Police have not released a possible motive. They said numerous tips from the public helped lead to the arrests. According to police, Gandler parked his car at the gym on Rainbow Boulevard in Las Vegas at 10 p.m. on Dec. 28. He did not enter the gym.

At 1 a.m., a two-door coupe pulled next to Gandler’s car. Ten minutes later, his car, with a shattered driver’s side window, rolled onto a parking median. Gandler was found dead from a gunshot wound to the torso.

Friends said Gandler was a successful entrepreneur, charmingly eccentric and gregarious. He worked in software, they said, and was in Las Vegas to attend the this week’s Consumer Technology Association trade show, CES.

“He was a very loyal friend,” said Naomi Paschen of Belmont, who last saw Gandler on Dec. 23 when he visited her family for pizza. “He had a ton of friends, some of them since second grade. He was just somebody you wanted to be around.”

Paschen, 31, said she met Gandler in 2006 at a cafe in San Francisco and immediately struck up a friendship that grew stronger with time. She said Gandler had a talent for finding unique restaurants on his travels and writing reviews about them. Paschen said he had been shuttling recently between the Bay Area and New York to visit his aging father.

Other friends said Gandler would typically sleep in a rental car, rather than book a hotel room, and he’d shower at 24 Hour Fitness.

“He had no qualms about that,” said Marcus Berger, 39, a friend from Portland, Oregon. He said Gandler was basically living out of his car when they met around 2008 and got to know each other at Jewish social events. “He just liked having a different, mobile lifestyle.”

Gandler was a project manager at Hearwear Technology, which creates software for audiology clinics. He was active in the Bay Area Jewish community and participated in a Jewish-Palestinian organization to resolve conflict. He attended the University of Buffalo, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, according to his LinkedIn profile. He earned an MBA from the University of Michigan in 2005.

He previously worked at Dell, Ford Motor and Applied Signal Technology.